


Baked With Love

by Heath17_KO5



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Pining, this is so cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21874255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heath17_KO5/pseuds/Heath17_KO5
Summary: Tobin has a craving for Christmas cookies, but store bought won't cut it, so Christen agrees to bake with her best friend (and pretend she's not pining after her).
Relationships: Tobin Heath/Christen Press
Comments: 22
Kudos: 392





	Baked With Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is so cheesy and sappy. Enjoy this Christmas fic! I wish everyone a happy holidays! As always, if you like it, leave me a comment and let me know!
> 
> (I don't know when I'll get to update photographer, but I'll try to work on it over the holidays and hopefully the wait won't be too long.)
> 
> (Also: Arthur Christmas is my all time favorite Christmas movie. It's so cute. Go watch it.)  
xx

“I want cookies,” Tobin whines halfway through watching  _ Arthur Christmas _ . “It’s not Christmassy without Christmas cookies.”

“Okay, well...Do you have any cookies?” Christen asks, an amused smile playing at her lips. 

“No. That’s the problem,” Tobin pouts. 

“We could buy some when we go shopping,” Christen suggests. She’s only visiting for the week, but she figures they’ll make at least one trip to the store in that time. 

“You can’t BUY Christmas cookies!” Tobin looks aghast. 

“What? Why not?” 

“You have to make them! With love. That’s what makes them proper Christmas cookies.”

Christen smirks. “Store bought ones don’t have love?” 

“Exactly,” Tobin replies. 

“Well, we could make some, then?” Christen suggests. She hasn’t done a ton of baking, but she’s pretty good at following a recipe. 

“Don’t have any unsalted butter,” Tobin mutters.

Christen rolls her eyes. “Would you like to go shopping for baking ingredients?” she asks, pausing the movie. 

Tobin beams at her and nods enthusiastically. “See? This is why you’re my best friend. You get me.”

Christen keeps her own smile in place and pretends that the words “best friend” are exactly the ones that she wants to hear. 

  
  


They somehow don’t think to look up a specific recipe until they’re actively IN the grocery store, which is maybe not their best plan. They’re just milling around the baking aisle, looking up recipes, all of which Tobin rejects for some reason or another. 

“What are you looking for in a Christmas cookie, Tobs?” Christen finally demands after Tobin has dismissed hot cocoa cookies with marshmallows as being “too much work”. 

Tobin wrinkles up her nose in that adorable way she has that always makes Christen’s heart beat just that little bit faster. 

“I dunno. Like my mom’s cookies.”

Christen rolls her eyes, pulls out her phone, and shoots Tobin’s mom a text asking for her Christmas cookie recipe. 

She gets a reply a few minutes later. 

“Tobs, do you mean her sugar cookies with the icing?”

Tobin’s eyes light up. “Yeah!” 

Christen texts back, and a minute later a picture of an old handwritten recipe gets sent to her. A second recipe for the icing follows a minute later. 

“We need oranges,” Christen says, scanning the ingredients. 

“Oh yeah! They do taste kind of orangey. It’s the best.” Tobin grins like she’s remembering just how they taste. 

Christen laughs and rolls her eyes again, then hooks her arm through Tobin’s and drags her to the produce section. 

Tobin is so smart and yet sometimes she acts so...ridiculous. Christen loves her. She really does. 

(It’s a problem, really, but she doesn’t think about it. She loves her in more than one way and she focuses on the kind that won’t explode their friendship. It’s for the best.)

  
  


“Okay, so ⅔ cup of shortening,” Christen says, measuring it out carefully. 

“Can I dump it in?” Tobin asks. 

Christen laughs and hands the measuring cup over after she’s smoothed off the top with a knife. She holds out the knife too after an amused moment of watching Tobin attempt to dump it in when it’s very clearly stuck to the sides. 

“Are you laughing at me?” Tobin demands, taking the knife to scoop out the shortening into the mixing bowl. 

“Only a little,” Christen replies.

“Fine. YOU dump. I’ll measure,” Tobin declares. 

She gives Christen a little nudge with her hip, bumping her over, and Christen pretends that the warmth she feels at the touch is just because the heat’s up a little high. 

(She pretends their bodies don’t brush as she moves around behind Tobin to be closer to the stand mixer. She pretends like the lack of space she leaves between them isn’t intentional.)

“One and a quarter cups,” Christen informs Tobin. 

Tobin scoops a heaping pile of sugar into the one cup measuring cup and starts to hand it to Christen, oblivious to the sugar granules that cascade off and dump onto the counter and the floor. 

“Tobin!”

“What?”

“You have to level it!”

“Chris, they’re SUGAR cookies. What harm is a little extra sugar going to do?” 

Christen rolls her eyes and guides Tobin’s hand back over the sugar container, using her finger to level off the sugar, careful to focus on getting all of the extra back in the container rather than the way Tobin’s hand is warm under her fingers, or the way her body is now pressed against Tobin’s side. 

“There,” she says, taking the measuring cup from her and adding it to the mixer. 

Tobin wrinkles her nose. “Spoil sport.”

“There is such a thing as too sweet, you know,” Christen points out. 

“Lies!” Tobin declares with a cheeky grin. 

Christen gives her a little nudge with her elbow, but can’t fight the smile that’s on her own face. “We still need another quarter cup,” she reminds.

“See, if you hadn’t flattened it out, we probably would have had that quarter cup,” Tobin points out. 

“Tobs, baking is a science. It’s like chemistry. They give the measurements for a reason,” Christen retorts, her tone teasing. 

“Fine, fine,” Tobin grumbles, but she shoots Christen a half grin that makes her heart flutter just a little. 

Not a reaction a friend should have, Christen reminds herself. 

But Tobin bumps her hip with her own, and her grin turns into a little giggle as she does so, and she’s so very in Christen’s space. It makes it hard to breathe, let alone control her heart rate. 

Tobin’s eyes are so bright, radiating happiness and warmth, brown with hints of amber that Christen could get lost in if she’d let herself. 

She doesn’t. 

She forces herself to look away, to look at Tobin’s hands...Tobin’s hands with long fingers...artistic hands...probably very skilled hands...

Fuck.

Christen bites her lip and checks the recipe on her phone again to give herself something else to focus on, ignoring the way her body is flushed with warmth, hoping that Tobin won’t be able to make out the faint blush on her cheeks. 

“Here,” Tobin says, handing over the measuring cup. 

Christen tells herself that her fingers don’t tingle as they brush against Tobin’s in the process of taking the measuring cup from her. She dumps in the sugar and turns on the mixer, yelping when the first few passes of the whisk make sugar jump out at them. 

Tobin laughs and reaches across her to turn it down a little, then steals a little glob of sugar and butter that had fallen on the table and pops it in her mouth. “Unlike with chemistry, with baking you can eat what falls out.”

“You know that raw flour is not actually good for you and neither are raw eggs…” Christen counters.

Tobin rolls her eyes. “Yes, Mom. But fortunately we haven’t added either yet.”

“I’m just saying it’d suck to spend the holidays with E. Coli or Salmonella!”

Tobin reaches past her, looking her dead in the eye, arm brushing against Christen’s stomach, as she picks up another little buttery sugar clump and puts it in her mouth with a grin. 

Christen swallows down the lump in her throat at the extended eye contact and forces herself to step back, just a little. “How your mother survived your childhood without going completely grey, I’ll never know. I swear you’ve given me grey hairs.”

Tobin laughs, the kind of laugh where she throws her head back and her whole body shakes, and then she’s making eye contact with Christen again. She reaches out and runs a finger through one of Christen’s curls that’s fallen out of her ponytail, and Christen barely dares breathe. 

“You’d still look cute with greys,” Tobin declares with a wink, then she reaches over and snags another lump of butter and sugar, dabbing it onto the end of her finger. She holds it out towards Christen. “It’s good. Try it,” she encourages. 

Christen shakes her head. “How clean is your counter, anyway?” she demands. 

“I wiped it down before we started baking, while you were in the bathroom. Relax,” Tobin urges, holding her finger up towards Christen’s lips. 

She could just take it and put it in her mouth herself, but she doesn’t. Instead she rolls her eyes and leans forward and wraps her lips around the tip of Tobin’s finger, sucking the butter and sugar into her mouth. 

Tobin’s eyes go wide, and she clears her throat as Christen pulls back, releasing Tobin’s finger with a slight wet pop. For a moment, Christen thinks-

But no. 

It can’t be. 

It’s just surprise. 

And Tobin has every right to be surprised. 

_ What the hell do you think you’re doing?  _ she scolds herself internally, feeling the blush on her cheeks grow even stronger. Out loud she manages to keep enough presence of mind to say, “Mmm...Okay. Sugar and butter is a pretty tasty combo.”

Tobin clears her throat again and turns back to the mixer, reaching over to flick it off now that the first two ingredients are pretty well mixed together. “Well, duh,” she replies. “That’s why they’re the basis of sugar cookies.”

Christen chuckles, and just like that everything is back on track. “Okay, eggs next,” she instructs, grabbing them from the fridge, appreciating the short blast of cold air as she does so. They’re not even preheating the oven yet and she’s already too hot. She ALWAYS gets too hot when she’s around Tobin, and she’s around Tobin all the time. She’d have thought she’d be used to it by now. 

They each break an egg, Tobin having to fish shell out of the bowl after breaking hers, and Christen laughs at her. 

Tobin wiggles her eggy fingers at her in retaliation, and Christen squeals and runs to the far end of the table. 

Tobin moves to follow her, but Christen protests. “You’re gonna get raw egg everywhere!” 

Tobin rolls her eyes. “It’s fine. Here. I’ll wash it off.” 

She does so, and Christen warily moves back towards her as Tobin flicks the mixer on. She starts it at a low speed, then turns it up as the eggs mix in more. “What’s next?” Tobin asks over the whir of the machine. 

Christen scans the instructions. “I think we need a second bowl.”

Tobin frowns. “Don’t we just throw everything in this one?”

Christen shakes her head. “It looks like we have to mix some dry ingredients together on their own first.”

“But then they just get added to this, right?” Tobin asks, turning off the machine. 

Christen shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, they do, but…”

“So we should just add them straight in,” Tobin concludes. 

Christen rolls her eyes. “Don’t you want these to be good?”

“Of course.”

“Then why don’t we just follow the instructions?” 

“Fine. We’ll make more dirty dishes. See if I care,” Tobin grumbles, then she grins. “I’ll just have you wash them.”

“You wish,” she retorts, forcing herself not to check out Tobin’s ass as she bends down to look in a cupboard for another bowl. Instead she turns back to the recipe and frowns. “Hey, do you have something to sift the flour with the other stuff?” 

Tobin stands up holding a bowl and making a face. “To what?”

“To...sift. Like sift them together all smooth,” Christen attempts to explain, gesturing vaguely. 

“Okay, I KNOW that’s not necessary,” Tobin argues. “Just use a whisk. It’ll be fine.”

Christen honestly isn’t sure what difference this could make, so she doesn’t argue. Instead, she waits for Tobin to get the flour out, and hands her the one cup measure again. To her horror, Tobin puts the whole cup into the bag of flour and scoops. 

“No! You’ll get too much! You have to scoop it in with a spoon so it’s not so packed down!”

Tobin frowns. “I swear this is what my mom does.”

“I bet it’s not,” Christen counters. “Your  _ mom _ is actually a capable baker.”

Tobin pinches some flour between her fingers and flings it at Christen. 

“Hey!” Christen protests as Tobin laughs. 

Christen can’t help it. She HAS to retaliate. She takes her own pinch of flour, bigger than Tobin’s and sprinkles it onto her. 

Tobin tries to dodge, but Christen chases her, laughing. She’s always been faster, so Tobin has no real hope at escape. 

She stops abruptly, and Christen runs right into her, laughing. 

She’s laughing and Tobin’s laughing as she catches her and grabs her hand and tries to make Christen dust the remaining flour in between her fingers onto her own shirt. 

She’s laughing until she realizes that Tobin’s arms are wrapped around her and Tobin’s face is next to hers and Tobin’s front is pressed against her back, and then she doesn’t care that there’s flour sprinkled on her navy shirt because Tobin’s tongue is between her teeth as she focuses, and then she’s beaming in triumph as Christen stops fighting, and then Tobin’s eyes have met hers. 

There’s a moment. A flickering of a moment really. Tobin’s eyes-

Maybe she imagined it, but it had looked like Tobin’s eyes had flitted to her lips as her smile had frozen on her face and began to fade into something more serious. 

And then the moment is gone and Tobin is stepping away with a chuckle in her throat saying, “Okay, okay, how much flour am I supposed to scoop into a measuring cup that is perfectly capable of doing the scooping all by itself?” 

Christen takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, counts to three, and does her best to center herself. “Um, let me check again,” she murmurs, heading back to the counter and reaching for her phone. 

The flour gets measured without further incident, and the salt and the baking powder do too. 

(“Powder or soda?” “Powder.” “You’re sure?” “I have read it four times, Tobs. Powder.” “Okay, okay, I’m just checking!”)

Christen whisks them together until she’s fairly certain that everything is mixed in evenly and then pours it into the stand mixer. 

She swears she doesn’t turn it that high this time, but there’s a cloud of flour that poofs out at her and Tobin’s laughing as she turns it down to the very first level. 

“I should start calling you Casper,” Tobin teases as Christen brushes flour off of her face. 

“It wasn’t THAT much flour,” Christen retorts, blinking some of it out of her eyes. 

“It was an entire cloud of flour,” Tobin argues. “Here, you’ve got some in your hair,” she adds, reaching over and brushing at her hair. 

It feels soft. It feels intimate somehow. 

Christen finds herself swallowing hard as Tobin brushes her hands through her hair a few more times and then steps back with a smile. “Better.”

“You better not have just put MORE flour in my hair,” Christen says, because teasing and joking is easy. It’s familiar. It’s what they do. 

They don’t have moments where they glance at each other’s lips. They don’t have these fleeting moments of sexual tension. 

She’s imagining it. 

She’s longed for so long that she’s started seeing it where it isn’t. 

Tobin puts a hand to her heart and looks exaggeratedly offended. “I would NEVER!” she declares. 

It’s just over-the-top enough that Christen checks herself in the reflective metal of a measuring cup just to make sure. Tobin’s telling the truth, though. 

“Can’t believe you didn’t believe me,” Tobin mutters, pouting out her lip adorably .

“You’ll get over it,” Christen replies with a grin. “Okay, so next up...” she says, changing the subject and checking her phone again. “Oh. Do you have a zester?”

“A what?”

“Like to zest an orange. Or a lemon.”

“I like how you think I know what zesting is when I have no idea what a zester is,” Tobin points out. 

“The orange rind. We need to add orange rind.”

“I have a grater,” Tobin replies, pulling out a four-sided grater from a cupboard. 

“The small side of that will work,” Christen says, handing Tobin an orange. 

“Oh, I see, I have to do all the  _ hard _ stuff,” Tobin jokes. 

“Yep. While I stand here and look pretty,” Christen replies with a grin. 

“Well, you are pretty good at that.”

The comment catches her off-guard. She knows Tobin doesn’t really mean anything by it. She probably doesn’t even realize what she’s said. Her demeanor doesn’t change at all. She doesn’t glance up to check for Christen’s response. She doesn’t do any of the things that Christen would expect her to do if she’d ACTUALLY been flirting. 

That doesn’t stop Christen’s heart from beating a little faster in her chest. 

“How much of this do we need?” Tobin asks, setting to work. 

“The whole orange.” 

Tobin nods and keeps grating, and Christen hops onto a stool and starts glancing over the rest of the recipe. 

“Ow! Fuck!” Tobin swears, and when Christen looks up, Tobin is sucking at her knuckle. 

“Are you okay?” Her protective instinct kicks in instantly and she’s out of the chair and reaching for Tobin’s hand before she’s thought it through. 

“Yeah, just slipped and tried to grate my knuckle instead of the orange,” Tobin mutters. She winces as she pulls the knuckle out of her mouth and looks at it.

Christen sees the way that the blood instantly seeps back to the surface. 

“Hang on, I’ll get you a bandaid.”

She rushes to the bathroom and grabs the box of bandaids from the medicine cabinet along with some antibiotic ointment and then hurries back to Tobin who’s sucking on her finger again. 

“Let me see it,” Christen instructs, opening up the bandaid and setting it up carefully. “We should wash it out,” she murmurs, as Tobin obediently holds out her hand. Christen takes it and guides Tobin to the sink, washing the cut carefully despite Tobin’s feeble protests that she’s more than capable of washing her hands herself. Christen pats it dry with a paper towel, taking extra care around the wound, then dabs on a little bit of ointment, and lastly applies the bandaid. 

“A+ care, Dr. Press,” Tobin teases. 

“Well, I can’t have my sous-chef out of commission,” Christen replies. 

“Wait, what? No way. If anything you’re MY sous-chef.”

“Um, I’m the one with the recipe. I’m the one calling the shots,” Christen counters. 

“Yeah, but it’s MY family recipe,” Tobin shoots back. 

It’s only then that Christen realizes that she’s still holding on to Tobin’s hand. She looks down, her witty retort dying on her lips as she looks at Tobin’s hand in hers. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles, dropping it unceremoniously. 

When she looks back up, Tobin’s biting her lip. 

Just for a second.

And then Tobin is saying, “Thanks for the bandaid.”

Christen nods. “I’ll finish grating the orange rind,” she replies. There isn’t that much left to go and Tobin leans against the counter nearby, watching her work. 

It’s like she can feel Tobin’s eyes burning into her. 

She’s not sure why or how but it’s like there’s been a shift in the air between them and Christen doesn’t know what it means or why it happened. 

(Or maybe she doesn’t want to know what it means. Maybe she’s too scared to speculate.)

They add the orange rind and then squeeze some juice out of the orange and add that, too, and Tobin turns the mixer back on, just until everything is blended. 

“Now we have to chill the dough,” Christen informs her. 

Tobin looks up at her with wide eyes and a pout on her face. “We don’t get to bake them yet?” 

Christen has to laugh. “Sorry.”

“How long do we chill it for?”

“A few hours,” Christen replies. 

“HOURS?” Tobin echoes. 

“We could finish the movie,” Christen suggests. 

“And start another, all the while I’m still craving cookies,” Tobin sulks. 

“I think you’ll survive,” Christen says with a pat on the arm. 

“Barely,” Tobin mutters, but she puts the dough in the fridge and heads to the couch anyway. 

Christen rolls her eyes and joins her. 

She’s careful to leave a little space on the couch between them. 

  
  


“Christen?” 

Christen knows from Tobin’s tone of voice that she’s about to ask about the cookies. Again. 

“It’s not chilled yet.”

“But how do you know??” Tobin asks, puppy dog eyes in full effect. 

“Because it’s only been an hour, Tobs.”

“An hour in the fridge would chill me,” Tobin retorts. 

Christen just gives her a long look, then chuckles despite herself. “You’re such a dork.”

“I just want coookieees,” Tobin whines. 

“I know.”

“They’re so good, Chris. And how often do we get to indulge?”

“Not often,” Christen admits. 

“Butter and sugar and yumminess,” Tobin sighs. 

Christen shakes her head, but can’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. “Watch the movie. It’ll take your mind off the cookies.”

“It hasn’t yet,” Tobin grumbles, shifting closer to Christen and leaning her head against Christen’s shoulder. 

Christen tries not to tense. She tries to focus on the movie, just like she’d told Tobin to do. She tries not to notice the way that Tobin’s body is warm where it presses against hers and how she can feel the slow, steady pace of Tobin’s breathing. She tries not to notice the way Tobin’s hair smells sweet and clean and just like her. She tries to keep herself steady, not breathing in too deeply, but not taking breaths that are too shallow either. She tries to keep her heart rate level. 

Tobin might hear it pounding in her chest after all. 

She feels like it betrays her with every beat, pounding out a simple rhythm faster and faster:

_ You love her. You love her. You love her. _

  
  


“Chris.”

Christen opens her eyes and shuts them again against the brightness of the overhead lights. 

“Chris.” 

Christen feels warm hands shake her gently. She opens her eyes again and takes in Tobin just...above her?

Christen blinks hard and lifts her head, trying to shake the sleep away. And then she realizes where exactly she is: on Tobin’s couch, half on Tobin, head resting on Tobin’s chest. 

Her head is practically on Tobin’s breasts. 

She sits up quickly, feeling her cheeks flush with heat. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I-”

“It’s fine,” Tobin replies with an easy grin. 

She wasn’t affected. She doesn’t have any idea what being that close to her does to Christen. 

“Sorry,” Christen mumbles again, not able to look directly at Tobin. 

“Chris, you’ve fallen asleep on me before.”

“I have?” Christen asks, alarm creeping into her voice. 

Tobin looks at her surprised. “Yeah. You fall asleep during movies all the time. Remember when I woke you at the World Cup by jumping on your bed and you yelled at me?”

Christen feels a rush of relief. Tobin didn’t mean literally on top of her, just that she’s fallen asleep while they were hanging out before. “Well it was a harsh way to wake up!” she replies defensively. 

“Well, I was gentle this time,” Tobin points out.

Christen nods, feeling her blush return at the warmth still lingering on her body from Tobin’s body pressed against hers. 

“Sorry if I, like, drooled or anything,” she mumbles. 

“So much drool. Like you were flooding me out. I almost drowned,” Tobin teases. 

Christen smacks her arm lightly and glares, her momentary panic at Tobin’s words fading when she realizes that Tobin’s just making fun of her. 

“You suck,” she accuses. 

“You love me,” Tobin counters. 

It shouldn’t cause a reaction. She should just brush it off. She does love Tobin. 

But her brain is still a little foggy from sleep, and their closeness today has been so much, and Christen freezes. She freezes and she thinks, “She KNOWS.” She freezes and her palms get clammy and her heart races and her throat goes dry, and Tobin is looking at her, brows furrowed in concern. 

“Chris?”

She manages a feeble laugh far too late. “Ha ha, you wish.”

Tobin’s squinting at her, her eyes unreadable. Her whole face is unreadable. 

Christen’s brain scrambles. She searches blindly through a list of possible things she might say to make this conversation go away. To make this moment into something beside the awkward mess she’s managed to make it. 

She looks around the room and remembers the cookies. She checks the clock. 

“The dough is probably chilled enough now,” Christen says. 

Tobin’s face lights up, whatever she’d been thinking forgotten, and Christen breathes easily for the first time since she woke up as Tobin says, “Really?” and gets up off of the couch. 

“So we can bake it now?”

“We have to roll it out and cut out shapes,” Christen replies. 

“Okay!”

She sounds like a giddy child on Christmas morning, and it makes Christen smile as she follows Tobin into the kitchen. 

She wills her awkwardness not to follow her. 

  
  


Tobin is very particular in her baking tray arrangement of cookies, it turns out. 

“No, you can’t have another Santa there. Look we could do two candy canes in that space,” she points out. 

Everything is placed perfectly to maximize space and it’s almost an artistic layout. Christen lets her handle it and settles for cutting out the shapes, careful to follow Tobin’s instructions of “Don’t do too many more stars,” and “We need more reindeer,” and “You have to do some more bells.” She just laughs and shakes her head and does as asked, appreciative of the fact that there’s space between them as they do their respective tasks. 

It makes Christen breathe a little easier. 

Tobin’s got the first tray already in the oven and she’s organizing the second pan, and Christen is rolling out some more dough because it was easier to roll out in portions. 

“A little thinner,” Tobin advises, leaning towards her. 

Chris waves her off. “Go organize the cookies on the other pan.”

“I’m just saying,” Tobin mutters, but she does as Christen had said anyway. 

It’s easy working side by side in the kitchen. It works. They flow around each other easily, just like on a soccer field, knowing where the other needs to be and when. 

It makes Christen’s heart ache, just a little, for what might be if she were a little braver...if Tobin actually returned any of her feelings that is. 

  
  
  


She’s done rolling and cutting out before Tobin’s done arranging, having to wait for batches to come out of the oven to free up pans. 

It leaves them both sitting around waiting for the oven to beep, Christen trying resolutely to do anything besides stare at Tobin. 

“We should make icing,” Tobin declares. 

“We have to let the cookies cool before we ice them,” Christen says. 

Tobin picks one up off of the cooling rack and takes a tentative nibble. Then she takes a bigger bite. “They’re kind of cool,” she says around a mouthful of cookie. 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Christen scolds, rolling her eyes at her. 

Tobin opens her mouth wide, showing her half-chewed cookie in retaliation for the nag. 

“Ewwww,” Christen complains as Tobin chuckles and finishes off the cookie. 

“They’re good,” she declares. 

Christen half wants to wait to taste them when they’re properly done with the icing and everything, and half wants to go ahead and eat one now. 

Curiosity gets the best of her and she gives in, taking one of the still warm cookies and breaking off a piece, popping it into her mouth. 

It’s buttery and warm and sweet and practically melts in her mouth. The orange is a really nice touch, too. Perfectly balanced. Her eyes flutter shut and she can’t help the small moan that escapes her lips. 

When she opens her eyes, Tobin’s looking at her. There’s an expression she can’t quite read on her face, but it makes her blush. 

“Do they really need icing?” she asks, rather than what she really wants to. 

Tobin nods. “Yes. Wait until you taste them with icing!”

“Okay, well, I guess we can make it.”

  
  


Icing cookies sounds good in theory. In practice it’s messy. Really messy. 

And, if she’s honest with herself, Christen is a bit of a perfectionist. Which would probably be fine except for Tobin is 100% an artist, so no matter how precise she tries to be with her icing, Tobin’s still manage to look better. 

She puts little dabs of blue for Santa’s eyes, but Tobin’s Santa somehow has rosy cheeks, too. 

When Christen tries mixing colors, it always ends up too skewed one way. Her purples are too blue. Her oranges are too red. Tobin seems to have it down to an exact science. 

She’s not mad about it, but she gets frustrated by her own limitations until Tobin is leaning over close and saying, “That little man is too cute,” all in her space and smelling like sugar and vanilla. 

“You’ve got a little-” Christen gestures at Tobin’s cheek, noticing the streak of green icing. 

Tobin attempts to rub where she’s indicating, but all she manages to do is smear some purple just above it. 

“Better?” Tobin asks. 

Christen laughs and shakes her head, biting her lower lip. “No.” 

Tobin attempts again, but again only makes it worse. 

Christen’s shoulders are shaking in her attempts to suppress her laughter, and Tobin pouts and looks at her. 

“Help?” she requests.

Christen reaches out and wipes at Tobin’s face,, rubbing her thumb over the smears of icing. She puts her thumb to her mouth and sucks it clean without thinking about it, her eyes going wide only when she realizes what she’s just done. 

Tobin’s close. God, she’s SO close. She’s “Christen could count her eyelashes” close. She’s “Christen can see each amber speckle in her brown eyes” close. 

Eyes that are looking at Christen’s lips where she’s just sucked icing off of her thumb. 

Icing that was on Tobin’s face.

What is WRONG with her? 

“You’ve still got some-” Christen tries to say, her voice cracking and hoarse, gesturing to the smear of icing that’s a little higher on Tobin’s cheekbone, letting her finger brush it gently. 

She needs to move away. She needs to go get her a washcloth or something before she does something REALLY stupid like surge forward and kiss Tobin. 

“You’ve actually got a little something,” Tobin says, her eyes darting between Christen’s eyes and her lips, “riiiiight, here.” Tobin’s finger, very definitely just dipped in the icing, wipes across Christen’s lower lip, and Tobin grins. 

It’s not her happy grin. It’s not her smirk. It’s not her half smile. This grin is daring. 

This grin takes Christen’s breath away. She tries to act normal, to act annoyed at the way that Tobin just blatantly painted her with icing. 

“Tobin,” she groans, but her voice comes out barely above a whisper. 

Her tongue darts out to lick the icing off and Tobin’s eyes watch, so, so very close. 

“Didn’t get it all,” Tobin says, her voice low. “Here, let me help.”

Christen can’t help the small gasp that escapes her lips as Tobin closes the gap between them. She’s so surprised she doesn’t really react. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s dreamed about this moment for far longer than she’d ever care to admit, and yet now that it’s happening she’s frozen to the spot. 

Tobin pulls back and wets her lips with her tongue. “Mmm. Sweet,” she says, looking Christen dead in the eye. 

That’s all it takes. Her brain’s still not working, but her body knows what it wants. 

She surges forward, hands cupping Tobin’s face, kissing her hard and deep and needy. 

Tobin slows them down, slows their pace as she slides her arms around Christen, probably getting icing on Christen’s shirt, but she doesn’t care one bit because they’re KISSING. 

Christen melts into her. She laces her fingers into Tobin’s hair and holds her close, their bodies pressing together, fitting perfectly, and when they break the kiss, they don’t let go, staying in each others’ space, breathing each others’ air. Christen rests her forehead against Tobin’s and opens her eyes to find Tobin looking right back at her. 

Christen shakes her head, just a little, not enough to break their contact as her chest heaves and she catches her breath. “What was that?” she asks. 

Tobin raises an eyebrow. “Best Christmas present ever?” she suggests with a smirk. 

Christen laughs and finally steps back. “You’re such a sap.” 

“I prefer to think of myself as adorable,” Tobin replies. 

Christen bites her lower lip and, because she feels like she can now, she says, “Yeah. That too.” 

Tobin grins wider, icing still smeared across her cheek, hair sticking out at odd angles from Christen’s hands threading through it, lips a little swollen. 

She’s never looked more gorgeous. 

She kisses her again, all of the tension she’s carried all day melting away. When she mumbles, “We should probably finish icing the cookies,” it’s against Tobin’s lips. 

“Probably,” Tobin agrees. 

Only the beeping of the oven timer breaks them apart again, and Christen sets back to work icing cookies with the biggest smile on her face. 

  
  
  


“Mmmm. Oh my God. These might be the best sugar cookies I’ve ever had!” Christen declares. 

They’ve settled on the couch, Christen’s legs over Tobin’s lap, a blanket over both of them, snuggled into each other’s sides. They’re on their third Christmas movie, but neither of them is really watching it. 

“See? I told you,” Tobin declares. “We couldn’t have bought these.”

“You’re right. You’re right. Your mom’s recipe is better.”

“It’s not just the recipe though,” Tobin counters. 

Christen looks at her questioningly. 

“Remember? They’re made with love.” Tobin offers her the cheesiest grin and Christen has to laugh. 

“I love you,” she blurts out, not caring which way she means it. 

Tobin just smiles wider. “I know.”

When they kiss it’s with crumbs falling from their lips and icing on their tongues and Christen thinks maybe she’s never been more in the Christmas spirit. 

  
  
  



End file.
